Gravity Is the Thing: A Novel - Hardcover

A frequently hilarious, brilliantly observed novel that follows a single mother’s heartfelt search for greater truths about the universe, her family, and herself

Twenty years ago, Abigail Sorenson’s brother, Robert, went missing one day before her sixteenth birthday. That same year, she began receiving scattered chapters of a self-help manual in the mail, The Guidebook, whose mysterious authors promised to make her life soar to heights beyond her wildest dreams.

The Guidebook’s missives have remained a constant in Abi’s life—a befuddling yet oddly comforting voice through her family’s grief over her brother’s disappearance, a move across continents, the devastating dissolution of her marriage, and her new beginning as a single mother and café owner in Sydney.

Now, two decades after receiving those first pages, Abi is invited to an all-expenses-paid weekend retreat to learn “the truth” about The Guidebook. It’s an opportunity too intriguing to refuse. If Everything Is Connected, then surely the twin mysteries of The Guidebook and her missing brother must be linked.

What follows is the complete opposite of what Abi expected––but it will lead her on a journey of discovery that will bring a disparate cast of characters into her life and change it forever. Gravity Is the Thing is a smart, unusual, wickedly funny novel about the search for happiness that will break your heart into a million pieces and put it back together, bigger and better than before.

Jaclyn Moriarty is the bestselling author of novels for young adults including Feeling Sorry for Celia, The Year of Secret Assignments, and the Colours of Madeleine trilogy. She has been the recipient of the NSW Premier’s Literary Award, the Queensland Literary Award, and the Aurealis Award for Fantasy. Jaclyn grew up in Sydney, lived in England, the United States, and Canada, and now lives in Sydney again. She is very fond of chocolate, blueberries, ice-skating and sleep.